Eurasia Foundation Act

EURASIA FOUNDATION ACT -- (House of Representatives - November 05, 2007)

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Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The Eurasia Foundation has reportedly done some good work over the past few years of the region of the former Soviet Union. Because the aid programs for the countries of that region from which the foundation has received its funding are now closing down, the issue before us is whether that foundation should be authorized to continue to receive funds directly from the U.S. in order to continue its democracy promotion work independently. I suspect that for many of us in this House the answer would be yes.

Just as we have had an Asia foundation, it is possible to see the work of funding this kind of foundation to do democracy promotion in Eurasia.

The passage of this bill, H.R. 2949, would help ensure that funding.

At the request of Members from our side of the aisle and the Foreign Affairs Committee, this bill has been amended in committee to try to address a significant problem that is not directly related to the Eurasia Foundation but that is an issue of importance to the wise use of our United States Government funds if they are appropriated to the foundation under this bill in the future.

Independent of the Eurasia Foundation, our United States Government-funded Enterprise Fund in Russia, the major state of that region, is closing down and is seeking to use the hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale of its assets to fund democracy promotion, civil society and rule-of-law programs in Russia, as well as economic reform efforts.

At the same time, we have democracy promotion programs under way across Russia and the rest of the region, through the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute.

So there is obviously a possibility that duplications of efforts will take place unless this Congress finds ways to ensure that it doesn't. We don't want to see U.S. Government-funded organizations compete to do the same kinds of activities if that leads to duplication and waste, and the democracy promotion in that region is too important to see money wasted at a time when Russian President Putin and others are forcing their own brand of authoritarian government on their nations.

This measure has been amended in a way that seeks to mandate that any successor to the U.S. Government-funded Enterprise Fund in Russia has to reach an agreement with the Eurasia Foundation before it engages in any democracy promotion efforts in that country. Hopefully, that will eliminate duplication to some degree.

The bill, as amended, does not go as far as some of us would like, I must note. It does not address the similar situation that will arise in the Ukraine in the next few years when our U.S. Government-funded Enterprise Fund there closes down and seeks to set up its own successor foundation that may, once again, end up duplicating the work done by the Eurasia Foundation in the Ukraine.

It also does not address a completely separate question about how the assets of such U.S. Government-funded Enterprise Funds in Russia and Ukraine will be disposed of, an issue that involves hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds. It has been the practice to ensure that the taxpayers get back at least 50 percent of the funds held by such funds when they close down their operations.

There is an effort in the House-passed fiscal year 2008 foreign aid appropriations bill, however, to allow our fund in Russia not to turn back to our Treasury half of its assets. That would mean that the taxpayers would lose $160 million, or perhaps even more than that, depending on the value of the assets sold in the case of the Russia fund alone. Those are monies that might otherwise go to help fund other worthwhile programs.

Perhaps this is not the bill in which to debate that issue, and our efforts in committee to address it in this measure were unsuccessful. But I take this opportunity to point out that issue in the hopes that the administration will be supported by Congress in its efforts to follow current practice and ensure that our Treasury gets back that very significant sum of money.

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